Lily, and: Blessings in Disguise, and: The Trick/New Stories, and: Fortunate Lives, and: The Pushcart Prize XVII: Best of the Small Presses, and: Becoming Light, and: The Man Who Knew Infinity, and: Till the Fat Lady Sings, and: The Dreyfus Affair, A Love Story, and: Eva-Mary, and: Truman, and: Folly, and: New and Selected Poems, and: Running Near the End of the World, and: Clockers, and: New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 1992, and: Islands of Storm, and: Evelyn Waugh: The Later Years 1939-1966, and: The Happy Isles of Oceania, and: The Wedding Dress: Stories from the Dakota Plains (review)

fi 'itti & Uly By Cindy Bonner Algonquin Books of Chapel HiII, 1992, 336 pp., $17.95 Lily is a timeless story, loosely based on tidbits of historical fact. It is a tale of the Old West, set in 1883 in McDade, Texas, and is filled with some of the stock of the western . We have a pretty daughter, a group of outlaws, gambling, angry townspeople, and even the obligatory shootout scene. This book differs, though, from the standard western because Bonner gives us a fresh look at the Old West through the eyes of Lily DeLony, an innocent young girl who falls in love with the shy eyes and endearing grin of outlaw Marion Beatty. The narrative voice is clean and simple, with a full-bodied flavor of Old Texas. I loved this book: once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. It's a simple, wonderful and warm love story which truly takes us into the past. Blessings in Disguise By David CleweU Penguin Books, 1991, 102 pp., $9.95 With his second collection of poems David Clewell has received the attention of Quincy Troupe, who nominated Blessings in Disguise for The National Poetry Series. He deserves it. This is an original and potent book where hobos, lovers, magicians, waitresses and fathers dance to Clewell's highly crafted but informal voice. His characters carry their faith in their open hands and live "in the static between stations , between the prayer/and the answer." They, like the rest of us, are searching for those everyday blessings that come in like "That good breeze blowing in/through every open window in the wideopen world." The Trick/New Stories By Fielding Dawson Black Sparrow Press, 155 pp., 1991, $12.50 Fielding Dawson writes brisk, fresh, uninhibited brief fictions (twenty-one in this collection) portraying people in helpless but comic situations. In "War" a supermarket becomes the quiet battlefield where struggles of race and class come up in frequent subtle skirmishes. An aging grandmother in "Member of the Health Insurance Plan" regards the neighborhood clinic as the only place she feels a sense of belonging in her despairingly isolated world. In each story Dawson holds us to a truth and keeps us there. Fortunate Lives By Robb Forman Dew 224 · The Missouri Review William Morrow, 1992, 286 pp., $20 At first glance it appears that the subject of Ms. Dew's new novel (the successor to Dale Loves Sophie to Death)—a New England college town, a professor's wife without an outside job, the rounds of meal planning, concerts, correspondence —is about as exciting as a rock from one's driveway. It seems so especially in the first chapter, which contains detailed descriptions of the behavior of a dog and three cats. But after that chapter, the heroine 's and her husband's parental emotions about one son leaving for college, another son already tragically gone, and a daughter freshly adolescent—as seen under the jeweler 's glass of Dew's elegant style— seem not to be an ordinary rock (nor Ordinary People) but the Star of India. This is certainly one of the best novels of the year. The Pushcart Prize XVII: Best of the SmaU Presses Edited by BUl Henderson Pushcart Press, 1992, 570 pp., $29.50 The Pushcart Press' anthologies of prose and poetry annually celebrate the best writing to appear in literary magazines and small press publications. After seventeen years, Pushcart has gained a reputation as one of the most respected prize publications in the literary community. Winning authors from the past include Saul Bellow , Russell Banks, Michael BIumenthal , Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver, Edward Hoagland, Richard Hugo, Ana'is Nin, Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike, to name a very few. This year's collection continues the tradition of finding the best of the year and making it available in a single volume. Philip Levine, a multiple Pushcart winner with his poetry, is featured this year with an unusual and exciting essay, "Mine Own John Berryman" (from The Gettysburg Review), in which he recounts early years in the Iowa Writers' Workshop under Berryman 's mentorship. Another brilliant essay, "Against Decoration," by Mary Karr (from Parnassus: Poetry in...